Utilitarianism

Utilitarianism
 Utilitarianism is a universal teleological
system.
 It calls for the maximization of goodness in

society.
 It asks for the greatest amount of goodness

for the greatest number of people

 David Hume Francis Hutcheson
Ethics should be based
Believed happiness was
on what is most Useful.
most important in
To determine whether an
determining what is right
action is right or wrong
or wrong. “greatest
one must look at what
happiness for the greatest
would be most useful in
number”
that situation.
Jeremy Bentham
Wanted to create a system of right and wrong – benefit all
society. One of the first Utilitarian view point. Most useful
thing in any moral dilemma is happiness. (leads people to
make right ethical decision. Creating the Principle of Utility =
Maximize pleasure – minimize pain
Neither Hume nor Hutcheson were Utilitarian's, joining of the
two views: usefulness and happiness that makes utilitarianism
 Types of Utilitarianism
 Act Utilitarianism
 Rule Utilitarianism
 Ideal Utilitarianism
 Negative Utilitarianism
 Preference Utilitarianism
 Making Ethical Judgments in
Utilitarianism
 Utilitarianism says that the Result or the
Consequences of an Act is the real measure
of whether it is good or bad.
 This theory emphasizes Ends over Means
 Theories, like this one, that emphasize the

results or consequences are called

teleological or consequentialist
 Act Utilitarianism
 Jeremy Bentham is the Father of Utilitarianism
and the proponent of Act utilitarianism
 Similar to Hedonism, as both center on pleasure as

the good.
 However, Greek Hedonism is essentially egoist in

nature, while utilitarianism is social in nature.

 Act Utilitarianism: An act is right if and only if it

results in as much good as any available

 Looks at the consequences of an action
 Apply Hedonic Calculus to every act to work put if
it will maximize pleasure and minimize pain.
 Strong: Bentham following one principle – Principle

of Utility. Must be adhered to without exception.

 According to Bentham, the most moral acts are those

that maximize pleasure and minimize pain. This has

sometime been called the “utilitarian calculus”. An
act would be moral if it brings the greatest amount of
pleasure and the least amount of pain
 Bentham said: an act is right if it delivers more
pleasure than pain and wrong if it brings about
more pain than pleasure.
 By adding up the amounts of pleasure and pain for

each possible act we should be able to choose the

good thing to do.
 Happiness = pleasure – pain
 Bentham’s Calculus of Felicity
 Like Hobbes, Bentham assumes that we humans
are all governed by the desire for pleasure and the
aversion to pain. He seeks to give advice on how
one should pursue the goal of pleasure
 His advice on pursuing pleasure is called the

Calculus of Felicity, made up of seven categories

intended to provide a rational analysis of pleasure.
Whenever one considers performing any action
one can analyze its value in terms of the calculus
felicity and contrast it with alternatives.
 Bentham believed that his Calculus of Felicity was
actually the schematization of something we do
semiconsciously
 The 7 category allows for altruism: if any act will bring

a great amount of happiness to a great number people

then, I should perform it, regardless of whether or not
it brings misery to me.
 To quote Bentham, ”Prejudice apart, the game of push-

pin is of equal value with the arts and sciences of

music and poetry. If the game push-pin furnishes more
pleasure, it is more valuable than either.”
 Application of Utilitarian Theory
A.) You attempt to help
an elderly man across B.) You attempt to help
the street. He gets an elderly man across
across safely. the street. You
stumble as you go, he
is knocked into the
path of a car and is
Conclusion: the act was hurt.
a good act.
Conclusion: The act
was a bad act.
 The Tools to Calculate the Tendency of
an Act
 Intensity: How strong/intense/powerful is the pleasure?
 Duration: how long will be the pleasure last?
 Certainty/Uncertainty: What is the probability that the
pleasure will occur? How certain will pleasure be?
 Propinquity: How soon will be the pleasure occur?
How near in place and time is that pleasure?
 Fecundity: how much more pleasure will grow out
from this pleasure?
 Purity: how free from pain is this pleasure?
 Extent: How many more people will receive pleasure
from this action?
 Rule Utilitarianism
 John Stuart Mill wayward disciple of Bentham and
proponent of rule utilitarianism
 Concerned that a utilitarian might actually
conclude that a game of push-pin really was better
than poetry
 He sought to rewrite utilitarianism in such a way
that he would be able to demonstrate that
Shakespeare outranked push-pin
 Rule Utilitarianism: An act is right if it conforms to
a valid rule within a system of rules whose
acceptance leads to greater utility for society
 Applied universally across societies to promote
happiness
 These rule should not be broken as they are the
basis of morality
 Mill was a Weak utilitarian
 He believed that the rules sometimes need to be
broken in extreme situation
 Part of the problem, according to Mill, is the
Calculus generates a purely quantitative analysis,
and pays no attention to the quality of pleasure
 In order to combat this lowering of culture, Mill
differentiated “lower desires” to “higher desires”
 Lower desires – (food, sleep, etc.) may be dealt
using the Calculus
 Higher desires – may only be discussed in terms
of quality – which Mill claimed no calculus could
evaluate.
 Altruism
 Altruism (unselfishness/love for others) was very
important to Mill
So he produced his Principle of Utility:
 Happiness is desirable
 Happiness only thing desirable as an end in itself
 General happiness of all is desirable. Increase
happiness of others increases your own.
 Comparison
Bentham Mill
•“The greatest happiness •“The greatest happiness for
(pleasure) for the greatest the greatest number.”
number.” •Focused on protecting
•Focused on the individual common good universally-
situations – act rule
•Relative ethical theory •Absolute ethical theroy
based on each situation. based on universally applied
•Quantitative- Hedonic rules
calculus (can be seen as •Qualitative – higher/lower
absolute guide to ethics) pleasures
•In search of maximizing •Teleological/
happiness consequentialist
•Hedonistic based on
pleasure
 Ideal Utilitarianism
 A utilitarian theory which denies that the sole object of
moral concern is the maximizing of pleasure or
happiness
 In G.E. Moore’s version of Ideal Utilitarianism in
Principia Ethica 1903, it is aesthetic experiences and
relations of friendship that have intrinsic value and
therefore ought to be sought and promoted
 Consciousness of pain, hatred or contempt of what is
good or beautiful, and the love, admiration or
enjoyment of ewhat is evil or ugly are the three things
that have intrinsic disvalue and should therefore be
shunned and prevented.
 Henry Sidgwick
 Sidgwick argues that the balance of pleasure over
pain is the ultimate goal of ethical decisions
 His argument is closer to Bentham than to Mill, as
he questions how it is possible to distinguish
between higher and lower order pleasures and
how we can distinguish one higher order pleasure
from another
 However, Sidgwick does argue that the process of
deciding is intuitive we make self-evident
judgments about what we ought to do.
 He argued that justice is the similar and injustice
the disimilar treatment of similar cases: ‘whatever
action any of us judges to be right for himself, he
implicitly judges to be right for all similar persons
in similar circumstances.
 Saying that people must act according to just laws
raises the issue of which laws are just and sits
uncomfortably with the principle of utility and the
Act Utilitarian position
 Negative Utilitarianism
 The term Negative Utilitarianism was coined by
Sir Karl Popper
 The concept of Negative Utilitarianism was
foreshadowed earlier e.g. in the work of Edmund
Gurney (1847-88)
 It has obvious affinity with Buddhism
 However, it has been argued that negative
utilitarianism could lead to mass euthanasia,
although this implication has been disputed.
 Popper’s ‘negative utilitarian’ principle is that we
should act to minimize suffering rather than
maximize pleasure.
 Classical utilitarian philosophers such as Sidgwick
had explicitly argued for the moral symmetry of
happiness and suffering.
 Complications aside, they supposed that increases
in happiness, and reductions in suffering are
essentially of equal value when of equal magnitude
 Popper disagreed
 He believed that the practical consequences of the
supposed moral symmetry were also dangerous.
 “philosophers should consider the fact that the
greatest happiness principle can easily be made an
excuse for a benevolent dictatorship. We should
replace it by a more modest and more realistic
principle: the principle that the fight against
avoidable misery should be a recognized aim of
public policy, while the increase of happiness
should be left, in the main, to private initiative”.
 “I believe that there is, from the ethical point of view,
no symmetry between suffering and happiness, or
between pain and pleasure.
 Both the greatest happiness principle of the utilitarian
and Kant’s principle, promote other people’s
happiness… [and] seem to me (at least in their
formulations) fundamentally wrong in this point which
is, however, not one for rational argument….
 In my opinion… human suffering makes a direct moral
appeal for help, while there is no similar call to
increase the happiness of a man who is doing well
anyway.”
 Preference Utilitarianism
 An Act Utilitarian judges right or wrong according
to the maximizing of pleasure and minimizing of
pain.
 A Rule Utilitarian judges right or wrong according
to the keeping of rules derived from utility
 A Preference (or Interest) utilitarian judges moral
actions according to whether they fit in with the
preferences of individuals involved.
 Preference Utilitarianism
This approach to Utilitarianism asks:
 What is in my own interest? What would I prefer in this
situation? Which outcome would I prefer? However,
because utilitarianism aims to create the greatest good
for the greatest number, it is necessary to consider the
preferences of others in order to achieve this.
 R.M. Hare (1919-2002) taught Peter Singer that “Equal
preferences count equally, whatever their content”.
 Need to consider our own preferences + those of others
 Need to stand in someone else’s shoes and try to
imagine what someone else might prefer – universally
 Peter Singer
 Our preferences cannot count any more than the
preferences of others + equal value
 Everyone’s individual preferences must be taken into
consideration when deciding what was in the best interest
of the group – “act as an impartial spectator”
 So in Singer’s view, killing a who prefers to die would
also be wrong.
 Singer’s approach to utilitarianism is to minimize
suffering rather than maximize pleasure
 For greater agreement about what cause pain that what
gives the pleasure
 Pleasure is more subjective to individuals than pain.
 Richard Brandt
 Brandt talks about the preferences someone would
have if they had gone through a process of
cognitive psychotherapy and explored all the
reasons for their preferences and rejected any they
felt were not true to their real values.
 He argued that the morality someone would then
accept would be a form of utilitarianism – with
their preferences free from any psychological
blocks and them in full possession of all the facts.
 Such a person would not, therefore, be influenced
by advertising.
Utilitarianism
Key Words
 Greatest Happiness
 The greatest happiness principle in general is
good, but it has many flaws as any ethical systems
do. Due to our inability to perfectly predict the
future according to our actions (assuming be
future is capable of being altered with our
actions), the results we desire are capable of. And
often do, fall short of what was intended. If
unforeseen parameters caused all of our actions to
backfire, even though we were attempting to act in
accordance with Utilitarianism, we would all be
considered immoral as our results only caused
pain.
 Moral right – human rights are those moral rights
of humans as such, rights that human have in
virtue of being human. “Human” here is used in
the moral sense and does not mean a biological
human, a member of the species of Homo sapiens.
 Intent – is the desire to act ethically when facing a

decision and overcome the rationalization to not be

ethical “this time”. Even if a person sees the
ethical aspects of a decision and has the
philosophical tools to make the right choice, he or
she still needs to want to do the right thing.
 Justice – the idea of justice occupies center stage
both in ethics and in legal and political
philosophy. We apply it to individual actions, to
laws, and to public policies and we think each
case that if they are unjust this is a strong, maybe
even conclusive, reason to reject them.
 Utility – the principle of utility states that the

action or behaviors are right in so far as they

promote happiness or pleasure, wrong as they tend
to produce unhappiness or pain. Hence, utility is a
teleological principle.
 Higher pleasure – are subjective pleasure
or objective pleasures. His discussion
concerns activities that employ our higher
faculties. What’s unclear is whether higher
pleasures refer to mental states or sensations
caused by higher activities or the activities
themselves.